Quote:
Originally Posted by Professor S
No it's not a good point Mana, and in fact it completely ignores reality in favor of revisonist history. I can see Game's post in Mana's quote, so I'll respond because it's just utterly incorrect on every level.
President Bush designed No Child Left Behind WITH Ted Kennedy. He didn't design it behind closed doors and certainly didn't ignore the party in opposition.
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LI...n=1&vote=00371
President Bush passed a prescription drug program with bipartisan support and influence. It was close, but voting was not on party lines, with many Republicans voting No and many Democrats voting Yes.
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LI...n=1&vote=00459
All wars started under Bush's presidency received massive public support and congressional support. (and lets not devolve this into a tired "he lied" debate)
Even the much maligned Patriot Act passed with 98 yays, one nay and one no-vote.
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LI...n=1&vote=00313
When Bush wanted to privatize social security, he couldn't convince the people and couldn't convince Congress, and it failed.
Regardless of how you feel about his policies, President Bush got his agenda through because he got the votes and had a majority of public support for his agenda when those policies were enacted. The unpopularity of those decisions came later.
President Obama is currently failing to convince the American people or their representatives. When he did, as with the stimulus act, his agenda was passed. Why do you think he's making the populist shift towards the economy and abandoning healthcare as his main concern? He doesn't have to votes to enact his agenda on healthcare, even with a supermajority. If he had the votes, don't you think they would have passed Healthcare reform immediately? They wanted it passed before AUGUST initially. It wasn't delayed because of wanted "bipartisan support", it was delayed because they couldn't overcome a filibuster because other Dems were not on board. And filibusters are part of the process for both parties depending on who is in power. They are there to ensure that controversial and greatly impactful legislation REQUIRES a supermajority to encourage bipartisanship. We've seen little bipartisanship from either side this past year.
If you don't have the votes, you don't get the policy. It's how our democratic republic works. If you don't like it, tough, but you don't get to change the rules without an Amendment to the Constitution. |
There is a difference between Obama and Bush are their strategy and how they convince the opposition party to come along.
Obama makes massive concessions to the right wing on everything he does. The "creation" of the legislation he puts up for vote has a TON of right wing influence. The difference is that the minority party is now rejecting everything Obama does no matter how many concessions he gives to them.
Obama's issue is that he talks too much.. and he's too nice to do a political attack on the right wing. When Bush pushed for something he simply would say "You vote with me, or I'm going to politicaly attack you for it." I know that's too vauge, so to give more examples..
"You vote for the government to do wireless wire tapping, or I'm going to tell the public that you are too weak to defend the country"
"You vote for the bailout, or when the economy crashes I'm going to blame it on you"
"You vote for the war in Iraq, or when the next terrorist attack happens it's your fault"
etc etc.
Obama is too weak to flex the political muscle that he does have. He never attacks the right wing politically for voting against him, even after making tons of concessions to them. Just until recently he never took out the time to bring up how 1.2 trillion of the deficit is the right wing's fault 100% and was not added by any policy that he added.
The fact that he doesn't mention that at every turn is just an example of how weak he is. It's like he wants the right wing to win. Thus why I call him center-right. He lets them go on TV and blame everything on him even though it's factually incorrect, then we have people on forums like you fear mongering people about what he "might" do opposed to what he has actually done.